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In the decade after The Year Astarion creates a terrible habit.
It starts innocently enough. He makes a list. Because he finds it hard to think now without four walls and the smell of moss. Because sometimes he’s walking and forgets where he is, forgets how to breathe, forgets he’s supposed to puppet this husk of a body for its perpetual audience.
Because his head is so empty if he doesn’t find something real to hold onto he’s going to float away and never come back.
So in the dark he scratches a list of things he knows with a piece of coal onto the floor under his bed.
One. It’s summer. He can hear all the little insects crawling, and the garden under Cazadors balcony is shifting to a different bloom.
Two. The hem of his shirt needs stitching. He’ll need to beg some thread off of Aurelia.
He’d use his own but it seems whatever used to be his was cannibalized during his time… away. He spots Petras wearing his doublet, already tailored to his overbearing shoulders on the first day, and he’s smart enough – tired enough – to not kick up a fuss. Cazador has told him he will be fitted come tomorrow with the start of a new wardrobe, and Astarion is sure his Master will take great joy in parading him in front of the tailor.
Three. There’s bumps on his nail beds now.
They’re slight things, but they're there all the same. He’s taken to running his fingers over them compulsively, grounding himself in the rises and dips.
Four, In four days it’ll be his turn to feed the Master.
Cazador has, of course, been gracious. Astarion has been fed more to offset his skinny wrists and the way he still faints when left in small spaces. Fresh, ripe rats he gets to feel die in his teeth. But under his shirt he can still count each of his ribs.
The jealousy drips down his neck like hot wax when the other spawn watch him eat, six sets of eyes that stare at him hungry. Shamelessly.
It helps to see it all put plainly.
He writes it and just, stares. Hugging his knees. It's no relief knowing that this will be his life– over and over and over again until the day he’s allowed to die.
Two dots of red glow above him.
“You awake, Astarion.”
Blearily he hisses. “No.”
“What’ll you do tomorrow?”
The room is dead quiet which means everyone is listening.
They’re wondering if he can perform, addled and weak as he is. They’re wondering if his failure will be their failure if the whip comes down.
He holds the gaze with his own red eyes, doesn’t blink because he doesn’t have to.
“I’ll figure it out.”
The next night the house servants dress him up, pepper his cheeks with rouge and make him gum on the lip paper so he looks a shine better than a leper.
He brings home a soft young man that holds him gently, that worries for him through the glamor. If they had more than hours Astarion is sure the man would take him away, feed him easy foods like broth rich with bone marrow.
And Astarion feels nothing. He makes sweet, empty love and has nothing at all in his brain. It doesn’t matter. They’re just two rutting corpses.
He doesn't bother moving when they come to take his mark away. If he learned anything That Year it was to pretend he was dead.
“Would you like to dine with me?”
Astarion turns to lie on his back, rubbing at his eye like he just woke up from a dream. He knows exactly how he looks, the way the white sheets hug his starved girlish waist. He’s lovely and gutted and the response comes easy.
“Yes, Master.”
Godey, waiting a halfstep behind the Master, tosses him a rat and cackles when Astarion fails to catch it. He has to kneel to scoop it off the ground before it can stain the carpet. It’s leaking, pus filled body cold in his hands.
He eats it there on the floor with his knees tucked under his chin.
Astarion starts to write compulsively.
To prove he’s real, maybe. To prove these hands are still his.
He reasons to himself that they're practical observations, things it would make sense to jot down. Remembering which establishments he’ll need to avoid for a while, what duties he’s been assigned in the house.
And, well, If it helps him to put to page how many times Godey has taken a hot poker to his tongue what does it matter.
He doesn’t keep them in the manor, oh no, never in the manor. He hides them in the city, in between houses and underneath loose stones. He keeps several stuffed under bar stools in whichever haunts he can visit more than once. The penmanship so small and panicked it would be a miracle if anybody could read it.
If anybody would find them.
A hot mix of embarrassment and pride fills him at the idea. What would they think, would they judge him? Would they understand?
They would, at the very least, know he exists at all.
“Psst, Astarion.”
Unconsciously he leans closer to hear better over the swell of violins.
They’re all trapped in another of Cazadors' lavish parties. These things used to be torturous for him before. All of these people coming up to him, touching him, unsubtly groping his arms when they've had one too many drinks. Now Astarion can't bring himself to care. Beaten or whole his body gets fucked on the same schedule.
"What scheme have you now, sister?"
Because they're a family. Always a family.
Dalyria winks and wiggles her fingers at the dancing meat. “Anyone you fancy?” she teases. He’s behind on his quota.
He takes a sip of his champagne wondering what it tastes like. Pretending to think.
He’d forgotten how to hold the glass flutes properly and Cazador had taken great joy in taking the cane to his hand till he remembered. Now his bony knuckles look artful on the flute stem instead of ones of a creature tenday starved.
What did he even like in people, before the before.
After watching the crowd he picks out someone at random. A stern looking girl with almond shaped eyes. Her lips set in an absent pout as shes passed between partners in the waltz.
"Oh." faux-gasps Dalyria, gripping his shoulder like a doting aunt. "I must tell father, he’ll be so proud you’ve lost your taste for men.”
His ears burn. "Don't you dare, Dal." He spits out, but it's too late. Just as she leaves he’s accosted by guests and he’s forced to tear his gaze away to play host. Smile coyly at whatever lord or lady gets introduced to him and entertain. Dance like a monkey. It’s second nature now to keep an ear for any slip ups while he charms them. Half the reason these are held at all is so Cazador has a never ending river of blackmail delivered straight to his doorstep. Dalyria, thinking she is helping, arranges over the stern looking almond girl with well placed giggles and Astarion charms her the way he's charmed everybody at this sordid affair. Feels nothing but quiet relief once her eyes start fluttering and he knows he's got his hooks in.
Hours later one of the guests pushes him into an alcove and pulls down his pants just enough to rut into his bare thighs. Holding down his hips they breathe in the smell of his hair, slow and then faster. Astarion stares somewhere in the middle distance waiting for it to be over.
Nervously, he has taken to writing in the tub. It’s perhaps the one place in the house all spawn leave each other to with no nosing. Equally repulsed by their naked bodies as they are.
He doesn’t know why he’s doing it at this point, going through the risk and trouble of smuggling it all around. Tobacco paper, rusty quill tips, thimbles of ink tinier than a magpie's heart. He’s been beaten for hiding it. Will get beaten more if he keeps doing it.
He just knows that if he stops he might go insane.
Done washing he’s making chicken scratches on his still drying knee. All his writing starts the same now.
'My name is Astarion Ancunín. I am still here. Today I…"
He hears bare feet thump against the floor and he writes faster, a manic edge moving his hand so he can get all these things out of him before he bursts.
Aulera knocks on the screen like it really is a door.
“You done in there?”
Astarions heart thaws. "Just a moment.”
Quickly he folds up the quill in the paper and hides it under his tongue. It’s waxed so it can stay there for hours if he needs it to.
He doesn’t dare keep them in the manor once they’re written, doesn’t even burn them here. But sometimes he’ll hold it to his chest under his shirt while the sun is out, before he's made to go into the night again.
'My name is Astarion Ancunín. I am still here. Today I…"
“What is the trouble now.”
Cazador, amused by house gossip has wandered down to the spawn room. His presence adding a cloying miasma to the nervous sweat of the seven of them.
On the floor is a hollowed out book with the front cover torn askew. In it a baby bird nested in rags, already dead with its neck torn open.
At a hundred and ten all Astarion feels is hungry, and jealous of the bastard who found the thing first.
Cazador takes one look at the sight of it and huffs through his nose. "Well?" he says, looking at them.
Astarion for once, even with his finger on the pulse of this house like it is, doesn’t know. It could be any of them. It could be something one of the human servants did on a whim that Godey’s simply using as an excuse.
When all of them fail to respond Cazador sighs like a disappointed school-teacher, not even bothering to hide his smile.
Cazador turns to Godey.
"Line them up against the wall, oldest to youngest. Make it quick, and make them thrash.”
Godey laughs, his jaw swinging crooked as he presses his front teeth to Cazadors hand like he’s kissing the queen. “Shall be done, My Lord.”
The seven of them watch as a water basin is brought directly to the room. Smaller than the tub but big enough to hold their heads. A fugue of resignation and dread claiming them all as one of the servants mixes in salt so the whole thing will burn.
Astarion looks down at his toes, hands gripped knuckle white behind his back, suppressing a flinch every time he hears the sound of water being retched back up.
When it’s his turn he’s a million miles away. His arms are tied and his shoulders pulled back with familiar pain. Made to kneel in front of the water basin he doesn’t see the look on his own face. Only Godey behind him, his non-expression of joy and his skeletal hand clenched where it's gripping his hair. And then nothing once his head is shoved in.
'My name is Astarion Ancunín. I am still here. Today I…"
He finds a lock of brown hair in the guest room with some of the scalp still attached. A fighter, this one. He shoves it up his sleeve and keeps moving.
Later, when he’s done for the night with the sun threatening to birth on the horizon he sneaks out onto the porch, claws a hole in one of the garden pots and buries it there. If it could be called a burial. A squirrel will probably have dug it up once the moon comes.
He doesn’t know what god they prayed to so he rattles ones off to those he remembers, can still bear to name after his time in the ground.
It's only when he feels the tips of his lashes turn acrid that he thinks to move.
He could just stay here.
It wouldn’t be so bad.
But just like always he crawls back inside before he becomes ash on the ground.
'My name is Astarion Ancunín. I am still here. Today I…"
Astarion brings home a man who shoves him down and pushes his face into still clothed cock. It’s easier, the ones that skip the poetry so he can be alone in his head. He’s undone a mans pants enough times he could do it in his sleep. It’s childs play to keep his mouth open and let his head get wrangled.
Cazador doesn’t care as long as they’re beautiful.
When they come to frog march his catch to wherever it is dead men go his lip has been busted open; and if he looks down there will be precious, ambrosiac blood leaking between his legs. Cazador will make him bleach the sheets, later, when Astarion’s done being the broken siren his Master has so come to love.
"Would you like to dine with me?"
He must take too long to respond. Cazador's face curls almost imperceptibly.
"Yes Master." he rushes out, feels the back of his neck pulled tight.
Cazador walks up and presses his lips thin down at him. Taking his thumb he smudges off what makeup Astarion has under his eyes to reveal the deep-set purple underneath them. Cazador grinds it between his fingers, a paste of white lead and talc powder, and throws him by the hair onto the floor. Astarion lands in a mess of sheets and thin limbs and doesn't dare move hoping the pathetic sight will sate him.
With one last kick Godey throws the rat in his hair and Astarion stays there, frozen, until he cant hear their boots with his ear pressed to the floorboards.
He takes his rat and sucks on its fermented innards like bad tasting gumdrops.
'My name is Astarion Ancunín. I am still he–
"What are you doing?"
Astarion pulls the paper to his chest. Startled, he looks up to see Aulera reading over his shoulder. “Mind your business.”
“No no, I saw that” she ribs at him, either unaware or uncaring of how tense he is. “Let me see it.”
She makes as though to grab it and Astarion steps further into the washroom. Instincts to make himself smaller and to bear his teeth fighting in his head. “Don’t.” he spits out, inelegant and panicking.
Aulera smiles with all her teeth. “Oh come on, don’t be like that.” Even decades later they all know Astarion is still the runt. The easiest to pick up, the easiest to manhandle. So Astarion, before he trembles and goes back to the stone tomb in his head, takes his nails to the wood of the wash bin and claws out a vial of acid he hid there over a decade ago.
If Astarion would ever admit to being ashamed of anything it would be how little he hesitated to throw it in her face.
She doesn’t scream. No, it’s more than that. A horrible wail that reverberates the walls with all the air that's ever been in her lungs, never ending. Piercing his ears. "Fucking whore . What did you do?!"
His heart hammers and he stumbles back, back, till he hits the corner of the wall. Watching wide eyed as she falls into the wash screen, breaking the panels and screaming murder.
"What in the bloody hells…"
Comotion stirs up in the spawn room and the shadow of Petras lumbers towards the alcove, worriedly cursing like a sailor. The gossip turns into proper yelling as Aulera rises from the splintered wood in her state, still chucking spittle his way.
Damn near hyperventilating Astarion crams the paper, quill, and all into his mouth and swallows. Dread pools in his stomach as it goes down. Petras pulls Aulera tight as those screams turn to sobs and looks at him as though a stranger.
"What is wrong with you?"
And then it's running down all their backs, the heady gravity of the Master coming down the stairs.
They all scurry into line, Leon helping Aulera as she wheezes, Astarion snagging the closest rag to hide his too thin figure.
They wait there, at attention with the smell of burning skin until the doors open.
Cazador shoves his way in with the air of a merchant who was told there was a rat nest in his grain stores. His nose wrinkles. Eyes running over the lot of them.
"Speak."
Oldest to youngest words pour out of them, Astarion shivering out as little as possible on his turn with dead eyes. Cazador pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Let me see it, girl.”
Aulera lifts her head with panicked short breaths, pace all the faster when Cazador holds her chin. Her face is still sizzling from the concoction that's been living in a notch of the wash basin for thirteen years.
“It suits you, you’re to keep it.”
"Of course, Master.”
She keeps her head exactly where it was as Cazador lets go, only curling up and glaring Astarion down once his back is turned.
“And Astarion?”
Astarions stomach cramps, suddenly all too aware of his nakedness. “Yes, Master?”
“Make yourself presentable and meet me in my study.”
He swallows. “Yes, Master.”
“It’s unlike you to be such a violent boy. What was all that fuss about?”
Cazador gets in these moods sometimes, where he likes a personal touch with the discipline of his charges. Actually becomes invested in the elaborate dollhouse he’s built for himself.
Astarion clenches and unclenches his fingers behind his back. His eyes wander over the spines on the bookshelf above Cazadors head, his tongue thick in his throat.
The pressure to answer weighs physically on his shoulders. It pushes him down, down into the rotting maggot filled dirt with such intensity it makes him want to puke. To gut himself on the spot.
"You need help finding your words?"
Astarion nods.
“Pants, then.”
He’s years past being embarrassed as he undoes his belt, there's only a dull sort of nervousness. Faded and beaten in that he is unsure of what will cause him pain but knows it will happen regardless. Stepping out of his trousers he folds them so they won't wrinkle and puts them down practically by the door where they are least likely to be splattered.
He doesn’t even need to be told to lean over the desk anymore. His arms are already held behind his back.
He waits for the poker, or the whip, or maybe that disgusting paddle with the quote on it.
Instead he flinches when a cold strip of wood touches his skin.
“Tell me.” Cazador taps the cane on the top of Astarions thigh, light and insistent.
Astarion bites his tongue. Looks squarely at a knot in the wood and refuses to answer.
"All these years and you're still so stubborn." Cazador sighs, rolling his shoulder.
Cazador traces the words on Astarions back that he’ll never see through his shirt. Pressing down harder the closer he gets to his neck.
"Please." Astarion begs, once, not sure what he's begging for.
It starts.
When he’s whipped usually they make him count the lashes, so there’s an excuse to start over. With the cane there is no such pretense.
All his joints lock up as it comes down on the cleft of his ass and before the pain can even register it comes down again. He chews his lip and breathes through it. Gripping his elbows so hard his nails dig into his skin. Counting each cut beaten into him from habit. Counting just in case he’s asked.
"Tell me." Cazador commands.
Eighty. His legs start to shake from how tense they are.
"Tell me."
A hundred.
Cazador doesn't bother asking again.
He loses track. Starts wheezing sounds of pain through his teeth with every cord in his body pulled taunt. Cazador clicks his tongue in annoyance at his lack of response and thwacks the bend of his knee to make him yelp.
“They taught you better manners in law school, surely.”
Astarion talks around the collected spit in his mouth. “Of course, Master.” Cazador must think him cheeky because he hits the back of his knee again and he yelps, again, toes curling in his socks.
“Astarion.” Cazador picks his head up by his ear and Astarion winces, refusing to make eye contact as his Master stares holes into his head.
And then he feels it, those hooks in him.
He clenches his jaw as hard as he can and bites through his tongue. "I didn't want her seeing my diary." Astarion grits out anyway, trying not to drift even as his face burns.
“And where did you leave it?”
"It's not here."
Cazador grimaces. "Where is it then?"
"I don't know." he says, because it's technically true.
Cazador slams his head down, then again for good measure, and Astarions forehead thunks against the desk each time. He hears Cazador move behind him to ring the servants bell and Astarion takes his chance to untense his muscles and rest his weight on something other than his legs. There’s no use contemplating what’s to happen.
The great wood door of the study creaks gently as it opens.
“Yes M’lord?”
He must look a scene, bent over the desk with his ass beaten blue, blood dripping down his legs. Idly he wonders if he even has enough of it to bruise.
“Ask the children which bunk is his and have it stripped down. Bring anything interesting.”
"Of course, M’lord.”
And the door slams horribly shut.
A rotary of servants come and dump every secret he’s ever made for himself in this house on the floor, and for each one his heads shoved back down and a new set of bleeding red lines are struck into his skin. Quills shoved into book bindings, ink pots stuffed into the chandelier, scraps of paper slipped under the floorboards. When more keeps coming Cazador summons Godey, so that Astarion may be caned continuously with proper pacing while he looks at all the stationary and baubles that were squirreled away.
It’s real hell then, watching Cazador and anyone who wanders by casually rummage through years, decades of hard work while he can do nothing but scream at the pain.
They run out of room on his ass and move to his thighs, then the soles of his feet. When he faints Godey lifts him by the ankles like a game hare so what little blood he has left will pool in his head and wake him back up. And then they keep caning him.
Late into the night Cazador finally tires of the sound of Astarion losing his voice.
“Have you learned your lesson, boy?”
Astarion doesn’t bother stopping the sob that rakes his body. “Yes, Master.” he chokes out. Has to speak past the snot in his nose while tears fall off the tip of it. “Please…please t-teach me again so I– so I can learn… p-properly.”
Cazador traces the inside of his thigh with the cane while he stumbles through the response, a constant threat. When Astarion finishes he’s hit on the base of his spine like it's a reward and he shrieks.
He comes back to the spawn room shaking like an old shitting dog.
Cazador dismissed him before he was able to collect his trousers, so everything from the house staff to the bed lice will have seen the bleeding cross-work on his backside smarting in the open air by noon.
His mattress has been cut open, the stuffing thrown across the floor. All the bedboards pulled off to expose the notches in the wood and the banisters of the wall are broken off. Every painting flipped over with the backing undone.
Aulera walks up to him, her skin newly gnarled over the bridge of her nose, and spits on his face.
Every part of him crystallizes.
Astarions eyes bounce around the room, pulse rabbit fast, and he nods sharply.
She doesn’t sneer because she knows it’s worse that way. Aulera just turns and leaves him to pick what's left of his bedding off the floor.
It will probably be weeks, if not months till Cazador will deem it worth his to provide new bedding for him. Hells, he probably finds it funny.
It's only hours later when his knees start to hurt that he remembers to wipe the cold spit off his cheek.
"Hey, hey, you awake?"
"Do you think Astarion'll go to ground again?"
"Nobody thinks that."
“If the gods would make me so lucky.”
“Whose next for feeding?”
“Me.”
“Trade? I’ve got a good one set up. C’mon.”
Astarion fiddles with the loose thread on his sleeve and tries to tune them out. Eyes squeezed shut. He’ll have to find a way to bum a sewing kit.
“Goodnight."
“Go to sleep already."
“G’night.”